With the proliferation of digital data, media content have been expected to come from various sources, including wide area networks, local area networks, broadcasts, cable, and pre-stored media. Digital data may be pre-encoded and stored or may be data encoded in real time. When a client device or receiver receives streaming media or content via a network, such device typically buffers a small portion of the streaming content to improve the streaming performance. When a user requests playback of a streaming content, the client typically also performs an initial buffering before starting the playback. This initial buffering manifests itself as a delay to the user. Similarly when the user desires to seek/jump to an intermediate timeline location of the streaming content, the client device also performs an initial amount of buffering before starting the playback. A long initial buffering delay hampers the end-user experience. Ways of reducing such delays are thus highly desirable.